Category Archives: Painting

Posts, articles and links mostly concerning the painting of miniatures. Lead Painters League posts, links to resources and inspiration elsewhere, and such.

The Workbench This Week, 29 May 2014

Quick overhead snapshot of the painting bench recently. As you might have guessed from recent posts, I’ve been in a “clear the decks” sort of mood, finally finishing off a number of smallish projects that have sat around ignored and dusty for too long, some of them over a year…

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The workbench this week. Lots of stuff going on, see text for details!

Clockwise from the top left we have (deep breath…) a batch of nine Pulp Figures thugs, two-bit crooks and menacing bystanders; a quartet of Baby Crocs for fantasy football from Impact Miniatures; a lady in a blue dress obviously being held captive by a gang of terrifying savages (Pulp Figures again); three twisted and disturbing stone monoliths intended as markers for a friend’s Chaos team in Blood Bowl (previously); Phantom Ace, Pulp Girl and little Lillie Poots from Statuesque Miniatures; some extra bases I whipped up with Milliput and pennies, one of which has an unprimed cobra in a basket on it from Pulp Figures…

Central to the whole assembly in their hospital-green robes, we have six Frothing Lunatics from Statuesque. (previously…)

Across the foreground from bottom right, we have a really, really massive Warg from Reaper Miniatures, being painted up as a quasi-supernatural Terror to inflict on people in games of Pulp Alley; a dino skull and some bones being done up as Blood Bowl markers for my Lizardman/Crocodilian team; the previously-mentioned finally completed pulp-era luggage and the Kali bronze; a quartet of light deck guns from Pulp Figures suitable to arm all manner of vessel or vehicle; three more Blood Bowl markers made of Renedra plastic barrels intended for my brother’s Scotling team.

Finally, last but not least, clipped into the two wooden clothspins (useful things to keep around a hobby bench!) there’s a pair of spiked footballs from Impact Miniatures. Blood Bowl again, obviously.

This assembly is only slightly tarted up and organized for the photo, everything here really is in progress or was recently finished and it really has been getting that crowded on my painting bench the last while. It’ll be satisfying to get more stuff completely finished, into storage and more importantly, onto the table and into use!

The Workbench This Week, 8 April 2014

So I wound up missing Trumpeter Salute over in Vancouver not because work had shipped me out of town (which I was expecting, except the project is delayed) but more or less because I couldn’t get organized to get myself over there, didn’t have the energy to plan or prep a game to run there, and really, for no particularly good reason at all. The Vancouver gaming crew includes a lot of folks I count as good friends who I really only see at Trumpeter Salute, most years I run something and have a blast doing it, and Vancouver is usually a fun city to spend a few days in, but I just had no enthusiasm this year, even with friends in the city encouraging me to come. I’ve seen some photos and read some reports of what looks like another good year at TS, so here’s to next year and me being in a more conducive mental state around this time of year!

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Not apple juice… Amazons in Pine-Sol for paint stripping. Click for larger, as usual.

So what am I up to, if not Trumpeter? Finally buying Pine-Sol to strip the botched paint job off my Impact Miniatures Amazon BB team, mostly, and basing a few of the Statuesque lunatics I mentioned last post.

The Amazons suffered from a screwed-up primer job, and then I threw paint over that to get them onto the table before I left for the February work trip. Some combination of a really old, nearly empty spraycan and -5 C temps on the day I spray primered them left most of them with a sandpaper-like primer coat, pebbly where it should have been smooth. The Pine-Sol should take all of that off and let me reprime them with new paint in better weather!

The Amazons will stay in their bottle for 48hrs or so, then come out for a scrubbing with an old toothbrush, and hopefully I’ll be able to reprime them this coming weekend.

Lead Painters League 7, Round Nine

Second-to-last round of the 7th Lead Painters League over on the Lead Adventure Forum, and it’s more Pulp Figures for me, with a cadre of suspicious characters lurking in a back alley somewhere!

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Suspicious Characters! 28mm Pulp Figures. Click for full size, as always.

These guys will be great fun in our Pulp Alley games, I’m sure. I’ll be doing up a League for them as soon as I’m back in Victoria and back into my usual gaming haunts!

Off to the last round of the LPL today! It’s been a lot of fun to participate, even if real life has kind of cramped my painting schedule.

Lead Painters League 7, Round Eight

Back to the Russian Civil War again this LPL round with some Copplestone 28mm Bolsheviks. I really like the whole Copplestone Back of Beyond range, even the “rank and file” infantry have loads of character and lots of really nice details.

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28mm Bolsheviks from Copplestone. Click for full size, as usual.

The tan background and khaki on the Bolshies gives this photo quite a nice sepia tone overall; that wasn’t really planned but looks good!

Lead Painters League 7, Round Seven

Round Seven of the LPL is up, and here’s my entry. These guys are 28mm U.S. Navy gunboat sailors from Pulp Figures. I used the famous movie The Sand Pebbles as my source for the uniform colours, as I’m pretty sure Bob Murch did when he sculpted these figures.

The all-white uniform is striking, but hard to do and keep interesting. I used a couple of shades of Reaper Master Series paint – they have a very nice triad of off-whites – and these sailors have come up very nicely.

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28mm US Navy gunboat sailors from Pulp Figures. Click for full size, as usual.

Over on LAF the LPL is continuing for another couple of weeks, go check out the current round!

Lead Painters League 7, Round Six

Over to fantasy figures for the first time in this LPL for me, with a team of Reaper dwarves. Lovely figures loaded with detail, as you’d expect from Reaper. These short fellows are a lot of fun to paint, although picking out all the buckles, belt bags and bits can seem like an endless process.

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The Blackstone Guard – Reaper Minis dwarven fighters. Click to see full size, as usual.

I’ve painted these warriors up in almost all black livery, although the main colour on them is their extravagant dwarven beards and long hair. Apparently this particular clan of dwarves runs strongly toward red hair.

The current round of the Lead Painters League is ongoing over on the Lead Adventure Forum; go check out all the awesome painting on display!

Lead Painters League 7, Round Five

Round Five of LPL7 was one of three Theme Rounds; this time the theme was “Historical Civil Wars”. This fits perfectly into my ongoing Russian Civil War project, and was one of the reasons I pushed myself to participate in this year’s LPL.

I pulled out some RCW figures that I’d finished very quickly and roughly, stripped them, and repainted them to a much, much higher standard. The main scene depicts a group of raiding Cossack cavalrymen coming around the corner of a village church to find the locals armed and waiting for them, with a big farm wagon pushed across the road as a barricade.

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Russian Civil War action – village militia vs Cossack raiders. Click for full size.

The local militia are Copplestone Castings Russian Partisan figures; they’re great figures loaded with character. I own twenty or thirty of these guys (at least two packs worth, maybe three, I’ve lost track!) and I have very few duplicate figures in that collection. I pulled out seven favourite poses to repaint for this scene. I painted them up as a mix of young men & old. The young men would likely be returned frontovik (Russian veterans of the Great War) or, if this is a Bolshevik militia, young radical Bolshies come out from the cities. There were rural militias for every political flavour of the Russian Civil War, and quite a lot of no distinct flavour at all — the “Greens”, who were either peasant militias formed for self-defence or anti-revolutionary bandits, depending on who was telling the story!

The Cossacks are from Brigade Games. Brigade’s Russian Civil War/WW1 in the East range doesn’t get as much attention as the Copplestone Back of Beyond ranges, but there are some lovely figures in that range, including these fairly recent Cossack cavalrymen. There’s a pack of regular riders with swords and slung rifles, and a command pack with officer, trumpeter and standard bearer; all six of these guys are from the regular Cossack pack. They’re very nice figures, a bit more fine-boned than the Copplestone figures but very compatible. The one downside to these Cossack figures is that some of the details are quite delicate, especially the sabres and scabbards.

By the time you read this my Round Six figures will be competing in the LPL; head over to the Lead Adventure Forum to see how they’re doing!

Fancy Photo Setup (or not…)

After I was done taking photos of my Lead Painters League Round Five entry, I figured the setup I use might be of interest to others. So here’s a photo of the highly sophisticated setup I used for this week’s Russian Civil War-based entry!

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Fancy photo studio… click for full size.

Some leftover 3mm MDF balanced across a couple of junk chairs a roommate pulled out of the basement for some reason, on a porch that badly needs repainting! My little tabletop tripod at lower left is balanced on top of one of the banker’s boxes I used to store and transport scenery. The ground is a square of craft felt I sprayed with brown ink a few years ago; the colour backdrop is one of the ones I have available here on the Warbard for anyone to print.

The building is of course my scratch-built Russian onion-domed church; the wagon, hedge and tree should all be familiar to regular readers. The Russian Orthodox cemetery is the most recent addition, with it’s laser-cut crosses.

Lighting was provided by that convenient nearby fusion reaction (eight and a half light-minutes away is nearby by cosmic standards…) and agreeable meteorology.

A home-made lightbox has been on my to-do list for… about a decade now. When the weather allows, an outdoor setup works nearly as well.

There are a number of great photo-taking tutorials aimed at wargamers out there; check Google or YouTube for more details. One of these days I should do a links post to my favourites!

Lead Painters League 7, Round Four

Last week’s LPL entry moves from the Lost Worlds of Round Three to the mysterious corners of the Indian subcontinent with some 28mm Thuggee cultists, also from Pulp Figures.

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The Dread Thuggee. Click to view larger.

These murderous chaps come from three different Pulp Figures packs. The three right-hand figures – the leader, acolyte and sword-bearing bodyguard – are all from PBT-24 The Mad Guru. The swordsman is from PBT-21 Thuggee w/ separate assorted Weapons & Picks, and finally the rifleman is from PBT 23 Thuggee Fighters w/Martini Rifles. I’ve got another six or so figures to finish, as well as a couple of neat scenery bits that come in the Mad Guru pack.

Most of the skin tone comes from W&N Burnt Umber acrylic artist’s ink, applied nearly full-strength over a basecoat of Reaper Intense Brown with a quick highlight (before the ink goes on) of Reaper Oiled Leather. The hair is mostly Reaper Walnut Brown, which is a very-nearly-black dark brown.

Unfortunately for them, these skulking murderers ran straight into a really spectacular group of cavalry from one of the best painters in the contest, and got soundly thrashed, although lots of people said nice things about them! Luck of the draw; I’m a pretty solidly middle-of-the-road painter so a lot of how well I do in LPL sometimes comes down to who the random matchup for a given round is!

Round Five of LPL7 is running over on Lead Adventure as you read this. Round Five is one of the Theme Bonus Point rounds, with this round’s theme being “Historical Civil Wars”. That’s right up my alley, so go see how my Russian Civil War figures are faring this week!

Lead Painters League 7, Round Three

More Pulp Figures goodness from last week’s LPL round. This crew of underdressed primitives was started sometime last year, finished over the winter, and have finally gotten their moment of glory, beating a very nice little regiment of 15mm Napoleonic figures in the third round of LPL7.

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The Shaman’s Crew, all from Pulp Figures. Click to view full-size.

Round Four is going on as you read this, and can be viewed over on Lead Adventure. Alas, the Thuggee figures I’ve fielded in Round Four aren’t doing as well as the Neanderthals did. Perhaps they’re overdressed?